One of the hard sells in doing anything with WW2 is that the pull is to make everyone who was in the German military evil. While there is no dispute about the atrocities the Germans committed in the war, people like to make them cartoon evil at times (twirling mustaches and tying maidens to railroad tracks kind of thing). The worst WW2 movie of all time “Swing Kids”, said that Nazis hated dancing. It was kind of like “Footloose” but in Nazi Germany. Hate dancing eh? I bet they killed kittens and declared war on rainbows too!
At any rate in order to make a German soldier anything other than a mustache twirling idiot the movie has to be something like “Valkarie” where Tom Cruise is trying to take down Nazis. There are a few exceptions like “Das Boot”, but nothing really recent that I can think of.
I think a biography/dramaitization of Rommel’s life would be amazing. And very doable in the “Nazis are evil” vein that is the criteria that must be met to make a WW2 movie (to be clear, Nazis are evil; but to make a movie about a German soldier who is not evil, that horse has to be beaten to death). If they keyed in on Rommel’s brilliance from Poland to Normandy, along with him being one of the few to stand up to Hitler… that would make for a great movie. Not to mention it has a rags to riches component since Rommel was really the only non-Prussian Field Marshall.
How about some fantasy movie about how it was Churchill’s fault the Germans starved during and after WW2 and the murder of ten’s of millions of people was merely Germany making “a choice” to feed her own people, which as an argument was used by neonazi’s as a form of Holocaust denial. It would be narrated by some actor that looks and dresses like Herman Goering, and who like Boss Hogg is always talking with a hotdog in his mouth. It would be a new form of sarcasm and Historical commentary. The followup sequel would be how the Reich was forced into war and had no choice and how Japan was forced into attacking the US and attack China 10 years earlier in case the oil got cut off.
Or how Bush and Blair were forced to invade Iraq to prevent Saddam’s planned attack on the west with WMDs.
Problem is, can they find an actor dumb enough to play Bush or one slimy enough to accurately portray Blair?
I’d like to see:
A movie showing the mass murder and ethnic cleansing of German civilians and “collaborators” from other nationalities that took place after the war, including the extent to which the western Allies helped the Soviets carry them out.
A movie showing Polish resistance to Soviet occupation which went on into the 1950s ignored by the West (which went to war in 1939 to “guarantee” Polish sovereignty, remember?)
A movie about the Germans who were executed after the Nuremburg trials for carrying out the Katyn massacre which everyone knew was really committed by the Soviets.
@Imperious:
How about some fantasy movie about how it was Churchill’s fault the Germans starved during and after WW2 and the murder of ten’s of millions of people was merely Germany making “a choice” to feed her own people, which as an argument was used by neonazi’s as a form of Holocaust denial. It would be narrated by some actor that looks and dresses like Herman Goering, and who like Boss Hogg is always talking with a hotdog in his mouth. It would be a new form of sarcasm and Historical commentary. The followup sequel would be how the Reich was forced into war and had no choice and how Japan was forced into attacking the US and attack China 10 years earlier in case the oil got cut off.
IL, you trying to imply you want Kurt to be the lead actor or producer in this movie ?
Or how Bush and Blair were forced to invade Iraq to prevent Saddam’s planned attack on the west with WMDs.
Problem is, can they find an actor dumb enough to play Bush or one slimy enough to accurately portray Blair?
I’ve seen actors becoming presidents. So Yes everything is possible.
A German soldiers life, from '39 to '45.
Or how Bush and Blair were forced to invade Iraq to prevent Saddam’s planned attack on the west with WMDs.
Problem is, can they find an actor dumb enough to play Bush or one slimy enough to accurately portray Blair?
W is not one of Oliver Stone’s best but worth an online stream. Josh Brolin (of Goonies fame) does a decent job as Dubya.
For the topic at hand a Kursk movie would be a helluva show.
I want someone like that to play Herman to see the ridiculousness of some ideas and faulty reading. Every scene he would get larger and his uniform would entail a greater degree of mustard and ketchup stains as he describes the starving nature of everyday Germans. I might play Hoover and cook Chickens in front of starving NAZI victims, while recanting their plight.
You don’t like Hermann much, don’t you?
No. He was an abject failure. Not unlike Hoover, his brother :evil:
Thats a good reason why none of these blokes ( Nazi’s) were assassinated. The Allies needed them as failures in order to guarantee the final result. If somebody other than Hitler ran things, Allies would have been in huge problems.
@Imperious:
No. He was an abject failure. Not unlike Hoover, his brother :evil:
Thats a good reason why none of these blokes ( Nazi’s [sic]) were assassinated. The Allies needed them as failures in order to guarantee the final result. If somebody other than Hitler ran things, Allies would have been in huge problems.
You are trolling, and can’t possibly be serious about either the above post, or any of your other posts in this thread.
A movie on the battle of the Atlantic?
Or The Cruel Sea.
I would like to see a film about the SAS or Chindits.
i would like to see a Leyte Gulf movie…the greatest naval engagement of world war ii and maybe all of history and there is not a single film on the subject
Would love to see a movie based of the axis point of view.
How did the japanese soldier feel, experience being dragged accross the pacific. […]
Also would add a lot of cultural differences as well, especialy for japanese soldiers that would fight till the death.
The 1971 film The Battle of Okinawa (Gekido no showashi: Okinawa kessen) might qualify. It’s an odd film to watch from a North American perspective because the US troops are depicted in the same “faceless enemy” manner that American films have sometimes used to depict enemy troops in various wars. The film is in Japanese, but there are bits of English dialogue overheard fom the faceless American troops…and what makes these bits of dialogue sound almost creepy is that they are evidently being delivered by sort-of-English-speaking Japanese actors who are trying to sound like American soldiers talking in G.I. slang. Their speech inflections are all wrong, and you can barely tell what they’re saying. Which raises an interesting question: is this just bad movie-making, or was this how Japanese troops actually perceived the Americans during WWII?
Would love to see a movie based of the axis point of view.
How did the japanese soldier feel, experience being dragged accross the pacific. First the victories @ singapore and then later solomon islands and rabaul or guam or something.
Bit like the pacific but then from the other standpoint.
A lot of movies focus on the winners but really the other sides where just doing their job as well they had families and had their friends dying on them just as much.
Also would add a lot of cultural differences as well, especialy for japanese soldiers that would fight till the death.
Letters from Iwo Jima
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51lo2dpaZ_g
The following are all recent Japanese movies, with great CGI effects available in the US either subtitled or dubbed:
Battleship Yamato
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4QWqDTCk2A
The Eternal Zero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOE3GuFbQWM
The Admiral (Yamamoto)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBQotim_ZHA
The Emperor in August
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0uE7cCqyKw
Try Generation War - a German TV series:
Not what i ment, more like a band of brothers type of series but then from the other point of view.
Not based on the generals but really about the soldiers on the axis side.
I went off what you had said… specifically “Would love to see a movie based of the axis point of view”… that’s a direct quote from you, so I linked multiple movies based on the axis point of view… three of the five movies I listed focus on a common Japanese sailor, soldier or airman (not the generals) and how that individual saw the war, relating to his family and his viewpoint of the war (did you watch any of the trailers?). I thought I was pretty dead-on to what you asked for in the post I answered… Band of Brothers is a tv mini-series, which is very different from a movie, and you definitely didn’t mention anything about a mini-series in the post I responded to, you specifically said movie, so I did my best to answer your post. Of all of them, the Eternal Zero is pretty much EXACTLY what you ask for, it’s very common man and his problems focused, other than it being a movie vs a mini-series, but most of what I listed focus on the common axis soldier, not the generals. Sorry, I was really trying to help by linking some unknown but really high-quality movies that really focus on the common Japanese man and his viewpoint.
Not what i ment, more like a band of brothers type of series but then from the other point of view.
Not based on the generals but really about the soldiers on the axis side.
The 1959 German film Die Brucke (The Bridge) is a pretty harrowing film made from the perspective of a group of teenage German boys who are pressed into military service as the war is about to end.
